The transition from February to March is the shortest turnaround time to get free games with the Games with Gold program. Also, at least for this March, there are multiple GOTY contenders in this batch.
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Velocity 2X goes multi-platform

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Forza Horizon getting Fast & Furious expansion

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PAX South Tour Guide Pt. 3 - Quick Tips

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The OG Replay for Jan. 19

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Every time I tried to play either Dragon Age Origins or Dragon Age 2, I’d find myself playing for the first 10 or so hours before turning it off and playing a different game. I gave it one more chance with Dragon Age: Inquisition.... [read more]

Driveclub Review

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This War of Mine Review: A new angle on war games

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On display at PAX South was a game called Starr Mazer, which mashes shmup gameplay with point-and-click adventure gameplay. 8-Bit Eric tried to do an interview with the developer, and well, you'll have to see what happens.
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8-Bit Eric: Shiny the Firefly Review

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It's time to give some awards out for Original-Gamer.com's 2nd Annual OG Awards.

Today, we have our miscellaneous awards for 2012.

Biggest Surprise Of The Year

Who would have expected that the ones publishing the some of the most unique games this year was gamers? Ever since Double Fine created their Kickstarter project for a new adventure game, the floodgates opened for developers to get the money for their games from the gamers. From fresh new concepts like Faster Than Light to the return of beloved franchises like Shadowrun, crowdfunding has become a viable way to make a game that many publishers would normally pass on. Unfortunately, there already have been some projects that reached their money goal, but then failed to release the game due to various reasons.

Worst Company Of The Year

Another big win for Capcom here. Last year, Capcom did a horrible job handling the Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 situation, but this year, the Street Fighter X Tekken surpassed it in almost every way. Let's look at all the sublte middle fingers that Capcom gave with the biggest crossover in fighting games and probaby in gaming history. After receiving so many complaints for not having Mega Man in both versions of Marvel vs. Capcom 3, they did add him into SFXT, but not the Mega Man you think of. Instead of the cute Blue Bomber, players were given the guy with the suit and beergut from the US Mega Man 1 box art. Then came the on-disc DLC characters for SFXT that Capcom tried to make excuses for. After receiving a huge uproar from gamers, including a complaint to the Better Business Bureau, Capcom did say they're going to revisit their DLC plans for their future games. We'll see if they stick to their word or if they'll be back for this award next year.

Best From Of Gamer Slacktivism

Slacktivism has become the big thing for young people. To "protest" some of the evils of the world, all you have to do is retweet or like a facebook page. Kony 2012 was the height of this slacktivism, but it was the usage of cupcakes to express the hatred over the Mass Effect 3 ending that really takes the cake, cupcake that is. After many fans of the Mass Effect series lost their shit over the ending of Mass Effect 3, ideas were thrown around to protest the awful ending. The big, novel idea came from a group on the BioWare forums who pooled their money to buy cupcakes for the BioWare team. However, these were no ordinary cupcakes, well actually they were, but these ordinary cupcakes were covered in frostings of three different colors to represent the three different endings of Mass Effect 3 that many gamers felt were all the same. Wouldn't the BioWare staff look silly once they ate a cupcake of each color to only realize the horror that the delicious baked goods all tasted the same? Well that didn't happen since BioWare decided to donate the cupcake to a nearby youth shelter, and let me tell you, not eating a cupcake of spite really pissed off these Retake Mass Effect dummies.

Biggest Disappointment Of The Year

A decade for a sequel is the norm for Blizzard these days. However, they know that when the game comes out, they need to deliver and deliver they did not with Diablo 3. Let’s count the ways Diablo 3 killed the love for the series:

1. Always online DRM not only keeps players from playing in a LAN, but guess what happens when millions of people try to connect to the Battle.net servers on launch day? It's called Error 37 and it sucked.

2. Several months after release, PvP is still not available and it was supposed to come out right around launch.

3. The real money auction house changes the game to one where everyone is farming away.

4. Can they make it any easier?

It's gone to appoint that members of the development team have accepted the blame for the quality of the game.

Best Triumphant Return

Everything about Max Payne 3 seemed like it was going to be a bomb. It had been almost a decade since the last game, the original developer(Remedy Entertainment) was not working on the game, and the setting for the game went from New York City to Sao Paulo, Brazil with a much older Max Payne. Guess what? It ended up being great. Yes, the film noir/graphic novel feel of the first two games was replaced with a complete rip-off of Tony Scott’s Man on Fire movie, but it was still a great game. In Max Payne 3, we see Max go through a whole cycle of emotions from being a complete wreck of a man to returning to that hero we loved in the first two games. Yeah it wasn’t the Max Payne we remembered, but it was a Max Payne that was truly memorable.

Biggest Assholes Of The Year

On the Original Gamer Podcast, we have a segment called "And then there's this asshole..." where we feature an asshole that has done multiple asshole moves in the weeks prior to the show. Featured the most times this year would be one of the biggest gaming site around, Kotaku, and for multiple reasons. In particular, after the situation with Miranda “Super Yan” Pakozdi and Aris Bakhtanians. on Capcom's reality show, Cross Assault, the site went on the offense regarding policing the fighting game community.

Just days after the news hit the web, commentators on the Level|Up fighting game stream began joking about the situation, and then the next day, Kotaku reported the jokes as news. Then after getting negative backlash over these articles, they asked for examples of what positive things the fighting game community has done. So after they started a witch hunt, now they wanted to be given examples instead of doing the research or, oh I don't know, look at the dozens of articles on the community and interviews that they've done in the past. The constant tabloids articles, hypocritical stance on sexism where one day they talk about the ills of hot women in games to then only show various oversexualized novelties of Japan, and the general lack of actual integrity the site has shown the past year is a shame to journalism.

Check back on 1/30 when we reveal the genre awards. Think we screwed up? Let us know in the comments.